Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Fog of Racial Paranoia

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are."-Kevin Phillips(political strategist to Richard Nixon)

The above quote came from a 1970 interview in the New York Times and, yet, 40 years later, the far right wing elements of the Republican Party are still utilizing this tactic in its attempt to paint President Obama and anyone associated with him as a racist to discredit his presidency.

Their latest target is Agricultural Department official, Shirley Sherrod, who is being reviled as a racist after this video was posted by the conservative website biggovernment.com -

What the video failed to mention was that she was recounting a story that took place some 24 years ago regarding a moral crossroads she had come to in regards to her own racial views. Instead, the video was edited to make it look like this was an official from the Obama administration who wasn't going to help out "whitey" when in fact, the white farmer in question, Roger Spooner, came out today in defense of Sherrod and said that he would have lost his farm without her help.

The repeated charges of racism against Obama are laughable. Look at this guy's Cabinet for chrissakes:

racism |ˈrāˌsizəm|nounthe belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

As ridiculous as the racism charges are against Obama, it's even more ridiculous considering that these charges are often coming from the most racially insensitive people you have ever seen(Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.). It's absolutely comical. And I'm not saying the Republican Party as a whole is racist, but it is absolutely, 100% guilty of pandering to racist elements in order to win elections.

And, yet, the worse thing to come out of this nonsense is the fact that Sherrod was fired and Obama claims he had nothing to do with it. Whether you believe him or not, and I don't, he has all the power in the world to not only reinstate her, but to issue her an apology for rushing to judgement.